4 Reasons Corporate Media Refuse to Talk About What Matters

[the other mike]

The media recently was all over Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for calling Donald Trump a “m@therf*cker” in the context of wanting to impeach him. It got lots and lots of coverage, over a period of several days, while the really big work the Democrats were doing in the House is largely ignored, along with most other consequential issues of the day.

Ever since the media began, in a big way in the 1980s, to ignore actual news and go for highly dumbed-down or even salacious stories, many of us who work in the media have been astonished by this behavior by the network and cable news organizations and the major newspapers.

They used to report the details of policy proposals in great detail (see this report from the 1970s about Richard Nixon’s proposal for universal health care, comparing his with Ted Kennedy’s, for example). But since the Reagan era, the networks have largely kept their coverage exclusively to personality, scandal, and horse race.

Why would that be? Why, since the late 1980s, has the “news” lost any semblance of actual news and detail, and degenerated into a cleaned-up version of the National Enquirer ?

For example, on January 3, the House of Representatives passed one of the most sweeping political reform bills since the Nixon era, including automatic voter registration, 15 days of nationwide early voting, and an end to gerrymandering. Not to mention a totally revolutionary code of ethics for the Supreme Court.

But was there any coverage of these details—or even of the bill itself—in the media? Even though there’s no way it would pass the Senate, it’s worthy of discussion and debate.

This is just one example of dozens of events that happen every day and are completely ignored by the media in favor of “who’s up and who’s down” horse-race reporting, and gotcha or scandal coverage.
continued;
4 Reasons Corporate Media Refuse to Talk About What Matters

 

[Pogo]

The media recently was all over Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for calling Donald Trump a “m@therf*cker” in the context of wanting to impeach him. It got lots and lots of coverage, over a period of several days, while the really big work the Democrats were doing in the House is largely ignored, along with most other consequential issues of the day.

Ever since the media began, in a big way in the 1980s, to ignore actual news and go for highly dumbed-down or even salacious stories, many of us who work in the media have been astonished by this behavior by the network and cable news organizations and the major newspapers.

They used to report the details of policy proposals in great detail (see this report from the 1970s about Richard Nixon’s proposal for universal health care, comparing his with Ted Kennedy’s, for example). But since the Reagan era, the networks have largely kept their coverage exclusively to personality, scandal, and horse race.

Why would that be? Why, since the late 1980s, has the “news” lost any semblance of actual news and detail, and degenerated into a cleaned-up version of the National Enquirer ?

For example, on January 3, the House of Representatives passed one of the most sweeping political reform bills since the Nixon era, including automatic voter registration, 15 days of nationwide early voting, and an end to gerrymandering. Not to mention a totally revolutionary code of ethics for the Supreme Court.

But was there any coverage of these details—or even of the bill itself—in the media? Even though there’s no way it would pass the Senate, it’s worthy of discussion and debate.

This is just one example of dozens of events that happen every day and are completely ignored by the media in favor of “who’s up and who’s down” horse-race reporting, and gotcha or scandal coverage.
continued;
4 Reasons Corporate Media Refuse to Talk About What Matters

It makes good points but ignores a big one --- the Foxification of news, for lack of a better term.

News, as in real legitimate news and not "öh noes, the next missing white girl" or "oh noes the scary black man is coming to get you" or "oh noes, here's what could happen to you in a tornado", is expensive to do and unrewarding financially, Reporters have to be flown around and housed with their producers; foreign bureaus have to operate, etc. In the olden daze when TV news consisted largely of the Chet Huntley (et al) reporting just after dinner, those broadcasts were loss leaders, intentionally so, subsidized by the mindless sitcoms that followed them. The linked article sort-of begins to touch on this with:

>> Because of the Fairness Doctrine, every one of the networks actually lost money on their news divisions <<​

-- That's not because of a Fairness Doctrine; it's simply because news costs a lot to do. The reward for doing so is to have a record of programming "in the public interest, convenience and necessity" that is at least theoretically the main criterion for being awarded a broadcast license. So come license renewal time the broadcaster shows the FCC, "look, we did all these news reports, plus the farm market report and city council meetings (at 4am but it's still on the list). And that's why they did that news.

Then in 1996 ---- same year as the infamous Telecommunications Act that spawned the Clear Channel explosion ---- comes Rupert Murdoch, who had made a fortune selling sleazy lowest-common-denominator tabloids, with the idea of running a TV station the same way. Instead of movie stars he would use politicians for the endless gossip, instead of the nuts-and-bolts of policy his channel would talk of the personal --- always the politician and his/her character traits, never the policy ---- because, as Mudoch well knew from his tabloids, controversy and conflict and EMOTION sells. So instead of flying reporters around and running foreign bureaus Murdoch would plunk talking heads at a table awash in garish colors and the women would wear three-inch skirts and the chyrons would run a continuous taunt of suggestive ideas and leading questions, ALL designed to mine the emotions. And instead of reporting news, these talking heads would ramble on about the news and especially -- the newsmakers. Again, the personal as soap opera.

And Fox Noise made enough money mining said emotions that the CNNs et al, to their discredit, fell into the same shithole. Hence the endless emotional taunting, specifically designed to bait the viewer so that he/she is nice and malleable for the commercial, which is the whole point.

And of course speaking of the infamous TelComm 1996 and directly to the topic, the broadcasters themselves, who directly stood to gain enormously from that legislation that would enable them to cement a top-heavy media monopoly, spent a grand total of nineteen minutes reporting about it. Nineteen minutes total, combined. Now that a small handful of megacorporations control everything, each one with its own tentacles in TV, radio, sports, publishing, billboards, movies, internet chat boards, etc etc etc, they're not about to use those massive tentacles in any way that would threaten their ownership of them.

 

[the other mike]

It makes good points but ignores a big one --- the Foxification of news, for lack of a better term.

Corporatization, globalization.... Propaganda's been going on in the media since Operation Mockingbird in the 60's.( before really back to early ww1 press) As to your point, Fox had it's rival in MSNBC but they sold out the same way CNN did when Time Warner took it over. All goes back to Slick Billy boy signing the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

 

[the other mike]

Sometimes even Fox gets it right. ( no pun intended)

 

[Pogo]

Sometimes even Fox gets it right. ( no pun intended)

Very good stuff, especially the middle one. I had to Google Phil Griffin to find out he's the third guy in the image with Sanders and Schultz.